We thank and commend in advance all you diligent students that (try to) hand out flyers on Sproul, but today we don’t have all nice things to say about your little squares of paper. If you’re only doing it because your respective club is forcing you to, even though you hate approaching apathetic fellow students, you just might be interested in this.

A new phone application is now available called Campus Quad, which updates you on events in and around Berkeley. It lets you browse through a live feed of current events, telling you all the ‘what,’ ‘who,’ ‘when’ and ‘wheres’ you need to attend. Groups can go on themselves and add their own events too. It basically tells you everything you need to know to keep up to date with the latest happenings — without the crinkle and hassle of paper.

Physical flyers often just get tossed out, scattered on the ground, or used as scratch paper to write down hasty to-do lists that will never get done. Not only would this digital route to publicity be saving trees (don’t worry, we’re not advocating the saving of cardinals), it would eliminate some of the hassle that comes with handing out flyers and putting up posters, which don’t even guarantee wide turnouts. For those on the receiving end, it would mean less dodging of eager clubs in front of the GBC and less messy bulletin boards around campus.

Of course, we would caution against the complete use of digital advertising. Not everyone has a smartphone, so relying on a phone application to spread the word wouldn’t necessarily be the smartest thing to do. But for anyone tired of paper wastage, this app can be downloaded from their site[1] or iTunes[2]. Check it out and see how you like scrolling through events rather than fumbling through stacks of flyers. Maybe you prefer the old-fashioned way, but given all the jokes and memes about Sproul methods, we’d say there’s also a fair number that don’t.